Manny Ruiz is 59, runs a 900 square foot vintage motorcycle restoration shop off a potholed side street in Boise, Idaho, and has held a grudge against Lila Marlow for 27 days straight. The county park ranger had slapped a $120 abandoned vehicle ticket on the 1978 Honda CB750 he’d left parked curbside for three days while he waited on a custom carburetor shipment, and he’d yelled so loud over the phone when he called to contest it that his 22-year-old shop assistant had ducked out back to vape and avoid the fallout. He’d avoided all community events for eight years, ever since his ex wife left him for a Portland real estate broker who wore boat shoes year round, but his assistant had begged him to hit the downtown summer food truck rally, said the al pastor truck from Nampa was making a rare appearance, and he owed her a bonus for covering two weekends of parts runs while he dealt with a pinched nerve in his lower back.
The asphalt sticks to the soles of his scuffed work boots, the air thick with taco grease, charcoal smoke, and the tinny twang of a cover band hammering through a Johnny Cash deep cut off in the distance. He’s third in line for tacos when someone’s shoulder brushes his, hard enough that he almost drops the cold Modelo he grabbed from the beer tent. He turns to snap, and freezes. It’s Lila. She’s out of uniform, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Forest Service t-shirt, a smattering of freckles across her nose he didn’t notice when she was handing him the ticket, her hair pulled back in a braid that falls over one shoulder. She smells like pine and coconut sunscreen, the same kind his little sister used to slather on before they went camping as kids.
She smirks, crossing her arms over her chest. “Funny running into you here. You gonna yell at me for standing too close, too?”
He opens his mouth to snap back, then closes it. The last time he talked to a woman who wasn’t his assistant or the elderly cashier at the grocery store was four months prior, when a customer’s wife dropped off a 1965 Harley to get repainted, and he’d mumbled three sentences before hiding in the back office until she left. He’s spent so long telling himself he likes being alone, that letting people in only ends with them taking half your tools and the good coffee pot, that the urge to be nice feels foreign, like trying to shift a bike that’s stuck in neutral. He huffs, nodding at the taco truck ahead of them. “Just here for tacos. Don’t make me regret not walking away.”
She laughs, a low, rough sound that makes the back of his neck warm. When she reaches past him to grab a handful of napkins from the dispenser mounted on the side of the truck, her arm presses against his for two full seconds, and he can feel the heat of her skin through his thin work shirt. He buys her a carnitas taco before he can think better of it, and they sit on the curb 20 feet away from the crowd, their legs stretched out in front of them, half empty beer cans resting in the gutter between their feet. Their knees bump every time one of them leans forward to take a bite, and when she brushes a fleck of cilantro off the front of his grease-stained flannel, her fingers linger on his chest for half a beat longer than necessary. She admits she’d seen him yelling at a parts supplier on the phone when she drove past his shop the day she wrote the ticket, didn’t want to interrupt, and her boss had been riding her to crack down on curbside clutter after a group of tourists complained about “eyesores” near the downtown greenbelt. She’d actually planned to slip a warning note under his shop door instead of writing the ticket, but forgot when she got called to deal with a loose black bear wandering through a residential neighborhood.
The grudge he’s been clutching for 27 days melts faster than the cheese on his second taco. He’d spent weeks thinking she was a power-tripping bureaucrat with nothing better to do than mess with small business owners, but she rants about her annoying boss for 10 minutes straight, tells him she restores old camping gear in her garage on weekends, and shows him a photo of the 1969 Triumph Bonneville her dad left her when he passed, sitting covered in a tarp in her garage for 10 years. She says she’s been too scared to bring it to any shop in town, heard too many stories of mechanics overcharging for work they don’t do, and she’d stared through the front window of his shop a dozen times watching him work, knew he was the only person she’d trust to touch it.
He doesn’t even hesitate when she asks if he’ll take a look. He pulls his personal cell out of his pocket, not the shop line he gives to customers, and types his number into her phone, his fingers brushing hers when he passes it back. The sun’s dipping below the skyline now, painting the clouds pink and orange, and she says she has to go meet a group of friends camping out at Lucky Peak for the night. She stands up, brushing dust off her shorts, and waves over her shoulder as she walks away, yelling that she’ll text him first thing tomorrow to bring the Triumph by.
He sits there for another five minutes, holding his half-eaten third taco, watching the crowd mill around in front of him. He’d walked into the rally planning to eat two tacos, drink one beer, and go home to watch a Western on his couch alone. The $120 ticket he’d been fuming about for almost a month suddenly feels like the cheapest, luckiest investment he’s ever made. He stands up, tucks the leftover napkin she’d used to wipe taco grease off her fingers into his pocket, and heads back to his truck, already making a mental list of parts he’ll need to check for that Triumph when he gets to the shop in the morning.
